Tom Stoppard - Literature Literature Biography Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler on 3 July 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Singapore and India during the Second World War and moved to England in 1946 with his mother and stepfather, his own father having been killed in Singapore. Educated at schools in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, he became a journalist working for the Western Daily Press (1954-8) and the Bristol Evening World (1958-60), and became theatre critic for Scene magazine in London (1962-3). He began writing plays for radio and television, including The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964), A Walk on the Water, televised in 1963, and The Stand-Ins, later revised as The Real Inspector Hound (1968). Albert's Bridge (1968) was first broadcast by BBC Radio in 1967. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966.

The play came to the attention of Kenneth Tynan, then working for the National Theatre, and it was produced at the National in 1967 and on Broadway in 1967, winning a Tony Award for Best Play (USA) in 1968. The Real Inspector Hound was first staged in 1968, followed by productions of Albert's Bridge and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, both in 1969. His play Jumpers (1972) was staged at the National Theatre in 1972 and his adaptation of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba was first performed in the same year. Travesties (1975) was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, transferring to New York in 1975 where it won a Tony Award for Best Play. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1976), was inspired by his friendship with Viktor Fainberg, who had been imprisoned in Czechoslovakia by the Soviets, and Stoppard began to speak out on behalf of dissidents including the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, who had been charged with subversion.

Professional Foul (1978) was written for Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience Year in 1977. On the Razzle (1982), adapted from Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen, was staged at the National Theatre in 1981, followed by The Real Thing (1982) in 1982. He was on the board of the National Theatre from 1989-2003. His trilogy of plays set in 19th century Russia, The Coast of Utopia (2002), was first staged at the National Theatre in 2002. Tom Stoppard was knighted in 1997. He lives in London. His latest plays are Heroes (2005), and Rock n Roll (2006). He has written the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum, and a new English version of Chekov's Ivanov (2008). Critical perspective Tom Stoppard is a deceptive dramatist. He is always written about as if he were an intellectual acrobat and dazzling word-spinner delighted by ideas and deficient in emotion.

And it is perfectly true that he is unafraid to deal with subjects that would deter many dramatists; from metaphysics and quantum mechanics to moral philosophy and moon landings. But behind the intellectual high jinx there lurks an often passionate humanist whose writing betrays an increasing concern both with the abuse of freedom and the nature of love. Whatever Stoppard is, he is certainly not a cold fish. The key to his work, both formally and intellectually, lies in the idea of collision: as he once told a New York Times interviewer, 'I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting myself.' After a peripatetic childhood (born in Czechoslovakia, he was raised in both Singapore and India) and an early career as a Bristol journalist, he gravitated naturally towards drama with its built-in opportunities for dialectic and debate. His early works were brief, ingenious radio dramas but in the mid-60s he sat down to write a substantial novel and play. He was convinced that the novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) would make his name.

In the event it was the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966 and a year later by the National Theatre, that earned him fame and fortune. Both works, however, clearly establish Stoppard's chosen territory. The novel - a wild, macabre farce taking place at the time of Churchill's funeral - contains a serious debate about whether life fulfils a predetermined pattern or whether it is simply a series of random events. And the play is based on the favoured Stoppard pattern of collision: two minor figures from Shakespeare's tragedy, uncertain of their own identities and passing the time flipping coins and playing word-games, come up against the seemingly inexplicable public events that make up Hamlet. Owing a big debt to Becket and Pirandello as well as Shakespeare, the play nevertheless marked Stoppard out as a highly original voice. Nor was the play simply an erudite box of tricks: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's acceptance of death as a means of discovering their true identities remains emotionally touching.

Stoppard's delight in the juxtaposition of, or collision between, two different worlds is a constant throughout his career. In his next stage-play, The Real Inspector Hound (1968), two theatre-critics disappear from their own cosily ordered world into the chaotic mystery of a country-house thriller and, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, end up dead. But in Jumpers (1972), written for the National Theatre, Stoppard takes the idea of collision infinitely further. On the one hand we watch a moral philosopher, called George Moore married to an ex-musical comedy queen, wrestling in his study with a convoluted lecture on God: meanwhile, in the outer world, an academic gymnast is murdered, astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon and Britain is in the grip of an authoritarian Radical-Liberal government. It's a play in which Shavian debate interacts with showbiz razzle-dazzle but behind it, as always with Stoppard, lies a serious idea: the question of whether moral values are purely social constructs or stem from an absolute divinity.

Stoppard's ability to choreograph ideas was further confirmed by Travesties (1975). Starting from the historical fact that Lenin, James Joyce and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara were all in Zurich at the same time in 1917, Stoppard explores both the nature of political and artistic revolution and the fallibility of memory: characters and events are all shakily recollected by a minor consular official, Henry Carr. Although immensely entertaining, the play suffers from its apparent endorsement of a Wildean belief in art for art's sake while ignoring Wilde's own subversive socialism. But any idea that Stoppard was simply a detached, apolitical stylist was knocked firmly on the head by two works that followed each other closely in 1977. One, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978) dealing with the incarceration in Soviet madhouses of perfectly sane dissidents, was a witty assault on institutional evil.

The other, Professional Foul (1978), was written for television and showed Stoppard tackling moral and political issues with absolute clarity: it dealt with a Cambridge Professor who visits Prague to see a football match and deliver a lecture on 'Ethical Fictions as Ethical Foundations' only to find himself confronting the real world of political persecution and learning that there is a clear distinction between right and wrong. These two plays showed Stoppard's passionate concern with human rights. And The Real Thing (1982), arguably his best play, proved that he could write about the pain of adultery and the excitement of love without sacrificing one iota of his wit and intelligence: along with Harold Pinter's Betrayal and Peter Nichols's Passion Play, it is part of a remarkable triptych of plays by middle-aged British dramatists on the theme of deception. What makes Stoppard's play special is that, partly because the hero is a successful writer with several of the dramatist's own characteristics, it embraces so many other themes: not least the relativity of perception and the difficulty of deciding what 'the real thing' actually is in art, life and politics.

The play is structurally intricate, philosophically challenging and emotionally affecting in its portrayal of a brain-box hero who gains self-knowledge through suffering. Having demonstrated both his moral commitment and ability to deal with quotidian passions, Stoppard increasingly devoted himself to adaptations (of work by Schnitzler, Molnar and Havel) film scripts (Brazil) and even opera libretti. His next major play, Hapgood (1988), enjoyed mixed fortunes: many found its mixture of quantum physics, espionage melodrama and romantic comedy confusing, though quite clearly the play was about the absence of fixity in human affairs. But In the Native State (1991) was a fine radio play, later adapted for the stage as Indian Ink, about the collision between a free-spirited English female poet and the India of the 1930s. And Arcadia (1993) dazzlingly showed Stoppard's return to theatrical form.

Two time-periods and worlds - a stately country house in 1809 and 1989 - were juxtaposed and the whole play revolved around a series of antitheses: classicism and romanticism, art and nature, order and chaos, determinism and free will. But there was also something inexplicably moving about the eventual merger of the play's two periods and about the play's heroine, a 13-year old mathematical genius, dying a premature death. Stoppard's capacity to touch the heart was even more apparent in The Invention of Love (1997) where the deceased poet-scholar, A. E. Housman, encounters his younger self and realises he is powerless to affect the course of his uncertain and emotionally unfulfilled life. In all these later works Stoppard displays his characteristic blend of erudition, wit and playfulness. What has become clear, however, is that he is a very passionate writer filled with a fear of cosmic disorder, hungry for some kind of secure, post-Christian value-system and, as T. S.

Eliot said of John Webster, 'much possessed by death.' Michael Billington, 2002 Tom Stoppard Tom Stoppard Nationality: England Executive summary: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead In addition to his staged plays, Stoppard has written a number of screenplays, including Brazil , Empire of the Sun , and Shakespeare in Love , co-authored with Mark Norman, for which they received an academy award. Father: Eugene Straussler (physician, d. Singapore by Japanese forces in WWII) Father: Kenneth Stoppard (stepfather) Wife: Jose Ingle (m. 1962, div. 1972) Wife: Miriam Moore-Robinson (b. 12-May-1937, m. 1972, div. 1992) Son: Oliver (with Ingle) Tom Stoppard - Theater Department - UMass Amherst The Invention of Love (1997) Tom Stoppard (1937- ) Tomas Straussler, the son of Eugene and Martha Straussler, was born July 3, 1937 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia.

In 1939 the Straussler family moved to Singapore to escape the Nazi invasion. Because of the impending Japanese invasion, 5-year-old Tomas fled to India with his mother and brother in 1942. His father stayed behind in Singapore and was killed. In 1946, Tomas Straussler became Tom Stoppard when his mother married Kenneth Stoppard, a British army officer stationed in India. Kenneth Stoppard moved the family to England, where Tom attended school until he was seventeen. At 17, he became a journalist, writing news stories and theatrical reviews for such newspapers as the Western Daily Press and the Bristol Evening World. From 1965-1971, Stoppard was married to Josie Ingle. They had two sons together. After getting divorced, he married Dr. Miriam Moore-Robinson in 1972. They also had two sons and divorced in 1991. Stoppard's Early Career Tom Stoppard began writing plays for television, radio, and the stage in 1960.

After having several radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio, Stoppard's first major success on the stage came with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1966. This fantastical treatment of Shakespeare examines the world through the eyes of two minor characters from Hamlet and incorporates many of the ideas that Stoppard would continue to explore throughout his career as a playwright. What is the meaning of life? How do the laws of probability affect us? How can we interact with classic works of literature in new ways? Although his formal education ended when he was 17, Stoppard's plays engage with weighty intellectual issues of language, literature, theater, philosophy, art, and mathematics. The Real Inspector Hound (1968) depicts two theater critics watching a murder mystery on stage. When they get caught up in the action, the play raises questions about the differences between theater and real life. Travesties (1974) explores the historical potential of a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, Switzerland in 1917, involving writers and artists such as James Joyce and Tristan Tzara.

In Arcadia (1993), the subject matter moves on to mathematics, as the characters discuss Fermat's Last Theorem and chaos theory. In 1977, after visits to Moscow and Czechoslovakia under the auspices of Amnesty International, Stoppard's work took on a more political bent. Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth and Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (set in mental asylum with a full orchestra on stage!), written in the late 1970s, display a marked interest in human rights issues. Stoppard has also written plays that deal with love, including The Real Thing (1982), about the intersections of love and theater, and The Invention of Love (1997), about the unrequited love of writer and scholar A.E. Housman. Stoppard on Film In addition to his success as a playwright, Tom Stoppard has also worked in the film industry. In 1985, he co-wrote the screenplay of Brazil, a fantastical film in which reality and dreams intermingle, directed by Terry Gilliam (who went on to direct Twelve Monkeys).

Stoppard directed a film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1990; the film stars Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Richard Dreyfuss. Stoppard was also a major force in the writing of Shakespeare in Love (1998); he shared an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his co-writer, Marc Norman. Tom Stoppard | British writer | Britannica.com British writer Alternative Titles: Sir Tom Stoppard, Tomas Straussler Tom Stoppard Sir Noël Coward Tom Stoppard, original name Tomas Straussler, in full Sir Tom Stoppard (born July 3, 1937, Zlín , Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), Czech-born British playwright whose work is marked by verbal brilliance, ingenious action, and structural dexterity . Stoppard’s father was working in Singapore in 1938/39. After the Japanese invasion, his father stayed on and was killed, but Stoppard’s mother and her two sons escaped to India, where in 1946 she married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard. Soon afterward the family went to live in England.

Tom Stoppard—he had assumed his stepfather’s surname—quit school and started his career as a journalist in Bristol in 1954. He began to write plays in 1960 after moving to London. His first play , A Walk on the Water (1960), was televised in 1963; the stage version, with some additions and the new title Enter a Free Man, reached London in 1968. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964–65) was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966. That same year his only novel , Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon, was published. His play was the greater success: it entered the repertory of Britain’s National Theatre in 1967 and rapidly became internationally renowned. The irony and brilliance of this work derive from Stoppard’s placing two minor characters of Shakespeare ’s Hamlet into the centre of the dramatic action. A number of successes followed.

Among the most-notable stage plays were The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978), Night and Day (1978), Undiscovered Country (1980, adapted from a play by Arthur Schnitzler ), and On the Razzle (1981, adapted from a play by Johann Nestroy ). The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard’s first romantic comedy, deals with art and reality and features a playwright as a protagonist. Arcadia, which juxtaposes 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century chaos theory and is set in a Derbyshire country house, premiered in 1993, and The Invention of Love, about A.E. Housman, was first staged in 1997. The trilogy The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage), first performed in 2002, explores the lives and debates of a circle of 19th-century Russian émigré intellectuals .

Rock ’n’ Roll (2006) jumps between England and Czechoslovakia during the period 1968–90. Stoppard wrote a number of radio plays, including In the Native State (1991), which was reworked as the stage play Indian Ink (1995). He also wrote a number of notable television plays, such as Professional Foul (1977). Among his early screenplays are those for The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Despair (1978), and Brazil (1985), as well as for a film version (1990) of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that he also directed. In 1999 the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love (1998), cowritten by Stoppard and Marc Norman, won an Academy Award . Stoppard also adapted the French screenplay for the English-language film Vatel (2000), about a 17th-century chef, and wrote the screenplay for Enigma (2001), which chronicles the English effort to break the German Enigma code.

He later penned scripts for a lavish miniseries (2012) based on novelist Ford Madox Ford ’s tetralogy Parade’s End and for a film adaptation (2012) of Leo Tolstoy ’s Anna Karenina . Britannica Stories Travesties Essay - Critical Essays - eNotes.com Travesties Essay - Critical Essays link Link Almost a decade before he wrote Travesties, Stoppard achieved major theatrical success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (pr. 1966), raising existential questions about taking action as he focused on the two young men whom Hamlet sends to their deaths in William Shakespeare’s play. Jumpers (pr., pb. 1972) carried philosophical arguments further as Stoppard’s Professor George Moore twists the logical system of the real G. E. Moore while practicing for a debate that may secure for him a university chair. In a more extreme juxtaposition of diverse elements than that in Travesties, Moore’s wife verges on a breakdown as she watches a moon landing, sings, and is surrounded by a troupe of acrobats celebrating a radical political victory. In The Real Inspector Hound (pr., pb.

1968) Stoppard explored the problem of reality’s relation to fiction by pulling drama critics into the play they are reviewing. The mystery, a parody of Agatha Christie, is solved after the critics become victims. In Hapgood (pr., pb. 1988), a confusing tale of spy and counterspy, he again mixed an intellectual debate (on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle) with parody. Occasionally, Stoppard has written more naturalistically, as in Night and Day (pr., pb. 1978), in which he examines journalistic ethics against an African setting, or The Real Thing (pr., pb. 1982), where he debates the nature of love. Generally, however, Stoppard seems to prefer to mix intellectual references to literature, philosophy, and art with mechanically controlled plays that are based on some trick—as in Travesties, where everything is filtered through Old Carr’s mind. Some critics have seen such devices as brilliant, while others have complained of the lack of plot and of indulgence in words and monologues for their own sake. All see Stoppard as a master of ideas who presents an intellectual challenge to his audiences.

Tom Stoppard biography, Personal life, Works, Novel Tom Stoppard : biography 3 July 1937 - Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE, FRSL (born Tomáš Straussler; 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy. Stoppard has been a key playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. In 1939, Stoppard left Czechoslovakia as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946.

After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright. He has been married twice, to Josie Ingle (1965–1972) and Miriam Stoppard (1972–1992), and has two sons from each marriage, one of whom is actor Ed Stoppard. Personal life Stoppard has been married twice, to Josie Ingle (1965–1972), a nurse, and to Miriam Stoppard (née Stern), and subsequently Miriam Moore-Robinson, 1972–1992), whom he left to begin a relationship with actress Felicity Kendal. He has two sons from each marriage: Oliver Stoppard, Barnaby Stoppard, the actor Ed Stoppard and Will Stoppard, who is married to violinist Linzi Stoppard. In 1979, the year of Margaret Thatcher's election, Stoppard noted to Paul Delaney: "I'm a conservative with a small c.

I am a conservative in politics, literature, education and theatre." In 2007, Stoppard described himself as a "timid libertarian". Stoppard sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill, and a bronze head is now in public collection, situated with the Stoppard papers in the reading room of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The terracotta remains in the collection of the artist in London. The correspondence file relating to the Stoppard bust is held in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. The Tom Stoppard Prize was created in 1983 (in Stockholm, under the Charter 77 Foundation) and is awarded to authors of Czech origin. Stoppard's mother died in 1996. The family had not talked about their history and neither brother knew what had happened to the family left behind in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1990s, with the fall of communism, Stoppard found out that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had died in Terezin, Auschwitz and other camps, along with three of his mother's sisters.

In 1998, following the deaths of his parents he went back, for the first time, to Zlín after 60 years. He has expressed grief both for a lost father and a missing past, but he has no sense of being a survivor, at whatever remove. "I feel incredibly lucky not to have had to survive or die. It's a conspicuous part of what might be termed a charmed life.". The Guardian, 6 September 2008 Stoppard, Kevin Spacey, Jude Law, and others, joined protests against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in March 2011, showing their support for the Belarusian democracy movement.. The Daily Mail.

29 March 2011 Works 1966: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon Theatre 1964: A Walk on the Water 1965: The Gamblers, based on the novel The Gambler by Dostoevsky 1966: Tango, adapted from Sławomir Mrożek's play and Nicholas Bethell translation, premiered at the Aldwych Theatre 1966: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 1968: Enter a Free Man . Developed from A Walk on the Water. First performed 28 March 1968. 1968: The Real Inspector Hound 1969: Albert's Bridge premiered at St. Mary's Hall in Edinburgh 1969: If You're Glad I'll Be Frank premiered at St.

Mary's Hall in Edinburgh 1970: After Magritte frequently performed as a companion piece to The Real Inspector Hound 1971: Dogg's Our Pet premiered at the Almost Free Theatre 1972: Jumpers 1972: Artist Descending a Staircase 1974: Travesties 1976: Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land first performed on 6 April 1976 1977: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was written at the request of André Previn. The play calls for full orchestra 1978: Night and Day 1979: Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth – two plays written to be performed together. 1979: 15-Minute Hamlet 1979: Undiscovered Country – an adaptation of Das Weite Land by the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler 1981: On the Razzle based on Einen Jux will er sich machen by Johann Nestroy 1982: The Real Thing 1983: English libretto for The Love for Three Oranges.

Original opera by Sergei Prokofiev. 1984: Rough Crossing based on Play at the Castle by Ferenc Molnár 1986: Dalliance An adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Liebelei 1987: Largo Desolato, translation of a play by Václav Havel 1988: Hapgood 1995: Indian Ink – based on Stoppard's radio play In The Native State 1997: The Invention of Love 1997: The Seagull – translation of the play by Anton Chekhov 2002: The Coast of Utopia is a trilogy of plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage 2004: Enrico IV (Henry IV) – translation of the Italian play by Luigi Pirandello First presented at the Donmar Theatre, London, in April 2004 2006: Rock 'n' Roll — first public performance 3 June 2006 preview at the Royal Court Theatre. 2010: The Laws of War — contributor to a collaborative piece for one-night benefit performance in support of Human Rights Watch.

Profile: Tom Stoppard | Official London Theatre Reporter: Matthew Amer, first published Mon 19 Apr 2010 16:08 /servlet/file/store5/item110418/version1/fileservice770/110418_770_preview.jpg Sir Tom Stoppard. Playwright. Born 1937. One of the few playwrights whose work is so distinctive that his name has been transformed into an adjective – Stoppardian – Tom Stoppard is among the most influential writers to have had his work presented on the London stage. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, Tom Straussler, as he was originally named, spent his early years fleeing the war, moving from his homeland to Singapore, Australia and then to India. His father, a doctor who remained in Singapore to help the war effort, was killed during the invasion, and when his mother married British army major Kenneth Stoppard in 1946, the family relocated to England. Stoppard’s early career was spent honing his writing skills as a journalist on The Western Daily Press, Bristol Evening World and literary magazine Scene.

It was in the 60s that he turned his hand to playwriting, achieving his first major success with the 1967 National Theatre production of Rosencratz And Guildenstern Are Dead. The tale of the two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet saw Stoppard win the 1967 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. When it was staged on Broadway, it won the Tony Award for Best Play. Stoppard followed up Rosencratz And Guildenstern Are Dead with pieces including The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), Night And Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993), The Invention Of Love (1997), The Coast Of Utopia (2002) and most recently Rock ‘N’ Roll (2006), raising his profile, his award count and the esteem in which he is held in the literary world.

In addition to writing his own stage work, Stoppard has translated a number of plays into English, created works for television and radio, and worked, both credited and uncredited, on movies. His script for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil received an Academy Award nomination, while his work on Shakespeare In Love went one better, collecting the Oscar for Original Screenplay. The word Stoppardian is often used to describe witty use of comedy while examining philosophical ideas, but there is also a sense of making often lofty and testing theories and principles seem accessible, as Stoppard’s actor son Ed recounts: “He once said something like ‘Chekhov writes about very simple things and somehow makes them feel incredibly weighty and complex and important, whereas I do the opposite.’ He writes about things which are seemingly beyond the audience, but enables them to make that jump, which always makes audiences feel fantastic about themselves. He’s also very good at bringing together a variety of characters with all of whom the audience is able to empathise.

The emphasis may move from this character to that character or this relationship to that relationship, but there’s still this kind of empathetic umbilical cord.” While the West End has not seen a new piece of work from the playwright since Rock ‘N’ Roll, such is the thirst for Stoppard’s writing that London’s theatregoers have been treated to a number of revivals in recent years. The National Theatre has twice staged his collaboration with Andre Previn, Every Good Boy Deserves Favours, Arcadia was revived in 2009, receiving a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Revival, and later this week, The Real Thing will open at the Old Vic, with Toby Stephens and Hattie Morahan leading the cast. While awards are far from the best way to summarise a career, Stoppard’s count of four Tony Awards, four Critics’ Circle Awards, seven Evening Standard Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, a BAFTA Award and an Oscar serve as a strong indication of the esteem in which the playwright is held.

When the CBE, Knighthood and the Order of Merit are added, it is easy to see how, when the idea of the greatest British playwright is discussed, only Shakespeare is arguably head and shoulders above Stoppard. Related News Tom Stoppard | United Agents Download CV Tom Stoppard’s most recent play, The Hard Problem, opened at the National Theatre last year. His plays include: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Jumpers, Dogg’s Our Pett, New-Found Land, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (a play for actors and orchestra written with André Previn), Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Adaptations include: Tango, Undiscovered Country, On the Razzle, Rough Crossing and Dalliance. Translations include: The Seagull, Henry IV, Ivanov, The Cherry Orchard, The House Of Bernarda Alba and Largo Desolato.

He has written eight Evening Standard award-winning plays and five of his plays have won Tony awards. Radio plays include: Darkside (set to Pink Floyd’s album, The Dark Side of the Moon); On ‘Dover Beach’, If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge (Italia Prize winner); M is for Moon Among Other Things, The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died and In the Native State. Television adaptations include: Parade’s End (BBC/HBO); A Walk on the Water (from Enter a Free Man); Three Men in a Boat and The Dog It Was That Died. Original television screenplays include: Another Moon Called Earth, A Separate Peace, Neutral Ground, Teeth and Professional Foul, which won awards from BAFTA, the Broadcasting Press Guild and Squaring the Circle. He adapted his television dramatisation of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat for BBC Radio.

Screenplays include Anna Karenina, Despair, The Romantic Englishwoman, The Human Factor, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, Poodle Springs and Shakespeare in Love (with Marc Norman), which won him an Academy award for Best Original Screenplay, a Golden Globe and the Broadcast Film Critics and American Guild awards for Best Screenplay 1998. He directed and wrote the screenplay for the film of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which won the Prix d’Or at the Venice Film Festival 1990 for Best Film. Film Playwrights'Album-Tom Stoppard | a Curtainup Feature Personal Statistics He was born Tomas Straussler -- place: Zlin, Czechoslovakia; time: July 3, 1937. His father, a doctor, moved his wife and two sons to Singapore when Tom was just two years old. In 1941, before the Japanese invasion Tom, his brother and his mother were evacuated to India. The senior Straussler stayed behind and was killed in 1946. Martha Strausler married British army officer Kenneth Stoppard.

The very British Stoppard was an unlikely husband for a Czech woman with vaguely Jewish links (It's been fairly recent since Stoppard became aware not only that both his parents were Jewish but that many maternal and paternal relatives perished in the Holocaust). Odd or not, Stoppard did marry Martha and before long moved her and her boys to Bristol, England. Tom Straussler became Tom Stoppard, the namesake of a man who, according to his own recently published account about his background" believed with Cecil Rhodes that to be born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life. . . His Utopia would have been populated by landed gentry, honest yeomen and Gurkhas." Tom Stoppard left school at seventeen and began his writing career as a journalist. In 1960 he quit full time newspaper work to freelance, writing critical articles, two pseudonymous weekly columns and his first full-length play, A Walk On the Water (produced in 1968 as Enter a Free Man and described by the playwright as a composite of several plays he admired and thus not an original work).

His other early playwriting efforts include a one-acter, The Gamblers, which was performed by the University of Bristol drama department in 1965. He also put in a season (September 1962 -April 1963) as a London drama critic writing reviews and interviews under the by-line, William Boot. This name is the first sign of his enduring penchant for word play and literary allusion. Boot is a name from an Evelyn Waugh novel named Scoop. This name as well as Moon (part of the title of his novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon) crop up in other Stoppard works with Boot and Moon variations of the Yiddish schlemiel and schlemazel -- the first being the character who makes things happen, and the latter to whom they happen. Through the 60s, Stoppard delved into radio and television writing as well as the theater and also had three short stories published in an anthology of stories by new writers. His career-defining work evolved from a one-act play written in 1964, performed two years later at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and then at the Old Vic in London.

That play about two minor characters from Hamlet was of course Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It established the twenty-nine-year-old Stoppard as a major success. As can be readily seen from the chronological list of his plays below, Stoppard was hardly a one-hit wonder. He also kept up his writing credentials in the world of radio, television and film. His most recent and wildly successful screenplay, the 1999 Oscar winner Shakespeare In Love, brought him full circle to his first big hit which was also indebted to the Bard. The film seems to have stirred up a renewed interest in reviving all things Stoppard. The prolific playwright found time to become engaged in the issue of human rights issues during the 70s, especially in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union about which he wrote numerous newspaper articles. His political concerns were also evident in his work -- i.e. Every Good Boy Deserves a Favor (1977) a play about a political dissident confined to a Soviet mental hospital and accompanied by an orchestral score composed by Andre Previn.

Still, he is not considered as a playwright committed to politics; in fact, he freely admits to voting for Margaret Thatcher because he admired her tough attitude to the unions even as he deplored her philistinism. As he explains such seemingly diverse stands, "I have been admirably consistent in my lack of certainty." As Stoppard's screenplay for Shakespeare In Love, portrayed Shakespeare's evolution as a playwright inspired by his love affair with an actress, Stoppard's earlier stage play (also a successful movie), The Real Thing is an example of real life Stoppardian irony since his affair with that play's leading lady, Felicity Kendal, led to the break-up of his 17-year marriage. Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon (1965) Misc. Short Stories Trademarks Of Stoppard's Plays A Stoppard play tends to to overflow with ideas -- philosophical, scientific, literary -- all the subjects that engage the playwright's fertile and ever curious mind. The plots tend to be difficult to pin down in terms of beginning-middle-end summations. In fact he's admitted that he has problems thinking of stories. "Every one of my plays is flawed by this.

I have to exert myself enormously to construct a story and then tell it properly." With plot or without, all are dished up with enormous wit. Puns, allusion, word play of all kinds keep audiences alert and amused. As Stoppard himself once said about his love for words: "I really dig words more than I can speak them. There are no words to say how much I love [words]." You're all doing it to impress each other. . .the winner isn't democracy -- just business. Jacob died for the women's page! Ruth Carson, Night and Day Freedom of the press is freedom to gossip --President Mageeba, Night and Day the African nation dictator in defense of his family controlled newspaper. I'm a fireman who goes to fires. I don't file prose; I file facts. -- cynical newsman Richard Wagner, Night and Day. The only beginning is birth and the only end is death. If you can't count on that, what can you count on? Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? --Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the title characters in one of their endless verbal shuffles.

Below a somewhat longer exchange: Perhaps they've all trampled each other to death in the rush....Give them a shout. Something provocative. Intrigue them. --Rosencrantz Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. (He sits.) A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty--and, by which definition, a philosopher--dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security. A good pause.-- Guildenstern Fire! -- Rosencrantz (jumping up) Where?-- Guildenstern It's all right--I'm demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To prove that it exists. Rosencrantz I'm afraid I worship mauve!

-- a decorator on his deathbed upon being asked about his religion in Indian Ink. As usual Stoppard weaves a variety of topics into his word web -- for example, this definition of the Indian art concept Rasa : Rasa is what you must feel when you see a painting or hear music: it is the emotion which the artist must arouse in you....a state of heightened delight. I'm not the woman you think I am. I'm not even the woman you think is the woman you think I am -- Christopher one half of a comic duo disguised as mannequins in On the Razzle. One false move and we could have a farce on our hands. -- On the Razzle I learned three things . . .during the war. . .Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary. I forget the third thing -- Henry Carr the leading character in Travesties What's it about? -- When someone echoed Rosencrantz and posed this question to the witty playwright he promptly replied It's about to make me very rich.

The central paradox of theater is that something which starts off complete, as true to itself, as self-contained and as subjective as a sonnet, is then thrown into a kind of spin dryer which is the process of staging the play; and that process is hilariously empirical. -- Tom Stoppard from a 1999 lecture entitled "Pragmatic Theater" at the NY Public Library. I think theater ought to be theatrical . . .. you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's —- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is. —Tom Stoppard March 10,1999 interview On the difference between writing plays and writing films: The main difference is that in films the writer serves the director, and in the theater the director serves the writer -- Broadly speaking, Tom Stoppard, 1988. Words . . . They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos.

But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more . . . I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead. â Henry in The Real Thing This [cricket bat] here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock it might... travel.

Now, what we've got here [Brodie's script) is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting âOuch!' with your hands stuck into your armpits. (indicating the cricket bat) This isn't better because someone says it's better, or because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on. . . — this wonderful enough quote to include in its entirety is by Henry, the Playwright in The Real Thing Back to Top A CurtainUp Feature: Playwrights

Question: The Real Inspector. Hound (1968) and Jumpers (1972) are plays written by whom?
Answer: Tom Stoppard